


different type of living

by agrestenoir



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate History, F/M, Immortality, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 16:18:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16411805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agrestenoir/pseuds/agrestenoir
Summary: Marinette is immortal, having been stuck as Ladybug since 1708 due to a mistimed Lucky Charm. She searches high and low for a way to detransform, and she thinks she’s found a way with her new partner, Chat Noir.





	different type of living

 

They say you die twice: one time, when you stop breathing, and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.

Marinette hasn’t died, though sometimes she wishes she could. It’s hard living for three hundred years, still as young and vibrant as the day she put on the Ladybug mask, while the rest of the world withers and dies around her. It’s even worse when she knows that her immortality is only a mistake: a mistimed Lucky Charm in the middle of a battle she’s nearly forgotten, memories dulled in the passage of time, that causes her Miraculous to react  _wrongly_ , and now she’s stuck, just as invulnerable and untouchable as Ladybug always is.

She’s been stuck as Ladybug since 1708. She can’t remember the last time she was just  _Marinette_.

It’s sort of like dying, she figures. If that’s the case, Marinette died a long time ago at seventeen. 

She’s been Ladybug for much,  _much_ longer.

 

 

*

 

When she first takes on the mantle of Ladybug, Marinette is warned of the risks being a hero entails.

Back then, people don’t take too fondly to the girl who roams the rooftops in a cropped, red mantua with a black corset and stomacher, who disposes of criminals and haunts the shadows. There’s a warrant on her head as soon as she slips out as Ladybug for the first time, and it continues even after the heroine disappears. Keeping Paris and her family safe, however, means more than the silly little threat of imprisonment.

  _You might be caught_ , Tikki cautions her.

  _You might be hurt_ , Tikki warns her.

  _You might never die_ , isn’t an admonition the kwami ever makes. 

 Marinette doesn’t know what will happen when she tries to use Lucky Charm on the frozen Seine in 1708 to aid in the delivery of grain by boat to the city. The ice cracks, she falls under, and the world changes. Pounding at the ice that covers her, running out of air, she has little choice. The Miraculous can only grant you invincibility for so long, and when the moment you’re close to dying is the moment you try for a little bit of luck, things  _happen_.

 _More time_ , she thinks desperately,  _I need more time!_

Suddenly,  _time_  is the Lucky Charm as she’s frozen in a single instant, giving her precious minutes to find a way out of the Seine and into open air. Clutching her chest, heaving great gasps, Marinette doesn’t realize what’s occurred. By giving her the extra time to find a way to safety, there’s no way to mark the end—she’s caught between one moment and the next, suspended in eternity with no way out. 

There’s no five minutes to pass, no energy to deplete, no way for the Lucky Charm to end.

Guards and citizens are already crowding the Seine and hunting for the heroine before she can escape. Ducking into a nearby alleyway with every intention of becoming her regular self, Marinette whispers the command under her breath, but the detransformation never happens. She tries again—still no luck. Again and again, until her throat is raw and her voice is hoarse, and the guards’ cries are growing louder and louder.   

Plastered against the stone wall, chest heaving as fear peaks, she realizes a few simple truths: 1) Ladybug can’t turn back to Marinette, 2) she must leave before the guards catch her, and 3) she has nowhere to go.

Stuck as Ladybug, she can’t ask Tikki for help. She can’t go home with the guards chasing her and bring her family into the situation because if they knew she was Ladybug and someone found out, they’d be executed right along with her. Confused and scared, as the guards turn the corner, Marinette whirls around and scales a building to the roof, where she takes off at a flat-out sprint in some aimless direction without looking back, desperate to figure out how to detransform.

(She’s been running for three hundred years.

She’s still as clueless as that very first day. 

It’s not something she likes to think about.)

The rest, they say, is history.

 

 *

 

 

Honestly, immortality isn’t as wonderful as the books try to say. There’s no great achievement in earning it. Heroes spend years attempting to find the Fountain of Youth or chasing after magical creatures for their power, and Marinette manages it because her transformation is stuck. While normally it takes a Lucky Charm timing out or a simple command to drop the mask, it’s like her powers have shorted out, and there’s no Tikki or other hero to help her fix her problem. 

She should know—she’s spent centuries looking.

By the 21st century, Marinette has crossed every ocean, walked across every continent, memorized the world in a way a cartographer could only dream of. High and low, fast and furious, she’s chased after every myth and story with the legend of the Ladybug following close behind. She’s come across the ruined temple of the Guardians, read the lore on every Miraculous, learned every spell she can—but there’s absolutely nothing. 

The most she’s found is that pairing the Ladybug Miraculous with the Black Cat Miraculous would grant the user absolute power and one wish. However, the Black Cat Miraculous was lost centuries ago along with the rest of the stones, buried under the passage of time, and now it’s even a myth among the legends. If she could find it, perhaps she might be free, but for now, she’s as doomed as the first day she started running.

The fact of the matter is that no one has ever searched for a way to  _undo_ immortality—only sought to find it.

 

 

*

 

 

Marinette isn’t sure what draws her back to Paris.

The last time she’d been on France’s shores was 1801, before she’d gone off to explore the New World, when she was certain that the country could survive without the famed Ladybug. At this point, news of the heroine has spread throughout the land, from every small village to every booming city, and now Ladybug is as known and legendary as Greek philosophers or Italian sculptors, religious deities and folklore—the names that history holds most dear. Nearly a century later, everyone in the world has heard of Ladybug.

By the time 2015 has rolled around, something in her gut  _twists_. Something is calling her back to Paris, back home, and for the first time in over two hundred years, Marinette listens. Paris may be the farthest thing from her mind, but a part of her  _always_ longs to return home.

So she does.

It quickly becomes clear why. Hawkmoth—the Butterfly Miraculous she learned about in the Grand Temple—has taken residence in the city and is terrorizing the citizens, and a part of Marinette just curdles at the realization. She’d left her home unprotected, and someone new has moved in. 

Hawkmoth isn’t the only new face.

“You’re new,” a voice says from behind her as she settles down on the top tier of the Eiffel Tower, looking over the wide, expanse of Paris, lost in her own silent musings. Whirling around, fists at her side as her only weapon, she stares at the boy with a metal staff slung over his shoulders, an easy smile stretched across his face. “You come here often?”

Under the moonlight, Marinette can make out glittering green eyes and a leather-like suit that holds the shadows. “Who’re you?” 

“I should be asking you the same thing,” the boy said, pursing his lips in a resolute expression. “What’re you doing in my city?”

“Your city?” she asks, because  _Paris is hers_.

“Yes,  _my_ city.” The boy steps closer. “My name is Chat Noir, and Paris is under  _my_ protection. So I’m only going to ask you one more time: who  _are_  you? If you’re some akuma or lackey of Hawkmoth’s, then you’d better leave. You’re not wanted here.”

 _…Chat Noir_? Marinette pauses, her frozen heart throbbing in her chest, and she cocks her head. “…The Black Cat?”

“Yes,” he acknowledges, clipping his baton to the holding on his hip. “And you are…?”

“L-Ladybug.” Her voice is hoarse, rough with disbelief.

Chat Noir stops, eyes widening. It’s clear he recognizes her name—and there’s not a soul on Earth who doesn’t. However, here is a different matter than every time before. Because Chat Noir and Ladybug are destined for greatness—partners and soulmates, one half of a whole, the best and worst in each other.

They’re the things of legend…

…and the answer to every question she’s had in the last three hundred years.

Marinette shakes her head, a smile brightening her face. “Chat Noir… I’ve been looking for you for a  _long_  time.”

“…And I thought I’d never find you,” he says in return.

“I need your Miraculous.” It’s the first thing that she can think of, the first thing that slips out. She doesn’t mean to say it, her mind too full of crushed hopes, that things and feelings she hasn’t felt in centuries are leaking out.

“Excuse me?” Chat Noir cocks his head to the side, searching her face for whatever prompted her request.

“Your Miraculous,” Marinette continues, eyes bright. “I need it—”

“I thought you said you weren’t working with Hawkmoth.” He’s shaking his head and stepping back. Right now, they’re standing on a rooftop in the middle of the night, the city deep in slumber around them. If he were to disappear, she knows she’d never find him. “Why would you need my Miraculous?”

What is she supposed to say?  _I need it to die_ , isn’t the first thing your fated partner wants to hear. 

“When it’s combined with mine, the user gets absolute power.” Marinette fixes him with a heavy stare, imploring him to understand her situation. “It can grant me one wish.”

“That’s exactly what Hawkmoth says. It’s why he’s attacking the city.” Chat Noir folds his arms against his chest, quirking an eyebrow high. “Why would I give up the one thing that’s actually keeping this city safe right now?” 

Marinette clenches her hands into tight fists at her side. “You don’t understand. I need it—” 

“You’re wrong,” he snaps back, eyes wild with barely restrained fury. “You don’t  _need_ it; you just want it. But Paris—this city— _needs_  it. If I’m not Chat Noir, then Hawkmoth wins, and everything I care about is destroyed.” Leaning closer, until his glare is almost too heavy to bear, he spits out, “How could you live with yourself if that happens?” 

 _Easily_ , she doesn’t want to say,  _Living is all I’ve been doing for three hundred years._  

“You don’t know what I’ve been through,” she tells him instead. “I’m stuck like this—as Ladybug—I have been for a long time. This is the only way I know how to drop the transformation.” 

“I have a duty,” Chat Noir says, “To Paris and to my people. I’m not going to drop them just because you’re tired of doing your job.”

“That’s  _not_  what this is,” she says heatedly. 

“That’s what it seems like.” 

Marinette has been around for too long, has seen the fury and pain that causes people to start wars. She can feel it now, bubbling up inside, and she has no idea what to do. It’s been centuries since she’d last felt this way, since that burning hope turned everything to ashes, and she was left as hollow and alone as the day her Lucky Charm backfired.

It would be simple to steal Chat Noir’s Miraculous. He’s a new hero, emerging just a few months ago, so young and so stupid. Meanwhile, she is a hardened warrior who has fought in wars against armies, who is known in every history book around the world, who has carved her name into the Earth with grit and passion, until there’s absolutely nothing left that she can’t conquer.

Plucking the Miraculous from his cold, dead hands would be all-too easy.

“I thought you were here to help,” he says, pulling her from her silent musings.

Ladybug is struck. “What?”

“Master Fu said Ladybug is my partner,” he tells her, voice soft and hesitant, almost as though he’s afraid. “We’re supposed to team up, and… take on Hawkmoth.”

“That’s not what I came here for.”

“So you didn’t come here to help,” he assesses, lips pursed in a thin line. “You came here for yourself.”

“I can’t help you when I can’t even help myself!”

“Why not?”

 And… it’s not what she’s expecting.

“Because I’m…” She can’t form a proper response.

“You’re selfish.” The words  _hurt_. 

As she stares at him, at his wide eyes and hard expression, at the soft hope that blossoms in his heart, a part of her realizes that he might be right. Perhaps she’s lost sight of the whole point of being Ladybug, of being a hero, in her long trek through time for the power to free her. 

Perhaps, as much as she loathes her immortality, there’s a reason for it after all.

It’s not like it changes anything though. Marinette is  _done_. She’ll do anything to take off the mask.

“You don’t need it if Hawkmoth is gone, right?” she asks hesitantly.

“I won’t need it if I know Paris is safe,” he corrects.

And there’s so much weight in those few words, that tell the story of a girl time can’t let go of, that Marinette can only agree. 

“Then I’ll help you,” she says, “I’ll be your partner and help you defeat Hawkmoth.”

It’s clear that’s the response he’s been looking for this whole time. “What’s the catch?” he asks because he’s not stupid—much to Marinette’s surprise.

“When we’re done, I get your Miraculous.” She points to her earrings with one hand and his ring with the other. “I am tired of being Ladybug—I haven’t been myself in ages. I want to be done.”

“And you think combining both will help?”

“It’s the only thing I’ve found.” 

It’s been three hundred years of searching, of yellowed pages in books crinkled with age, dust from millennia past that tickles her nose as she digs through ruins, talking to hidden wizards and consulting old temples. The Miraculous stones are known throughout history if you know where to look, and yet nothing has spoken of a problem with the Ladybug Miraculous—of becoming stuck in time, unable to die or live.

Absolute power is her saving grace—it just  _has_  to be.

(Marinette doesn’t want think about what happens if it isn’t.)

Chat Noir thinks over her proposal, silent for a moment, before a bright smile stretches across his face. “Okay,” he tells her, “I’ll give you my Miraculous once Paris is safe. You have my word, Ladybug.”

He holds out his hand towards her. “Partner?” he asks.

There’s a short silence, the span of a single heartbeat she doesn’t have, before she clasps her hand with his. “Partner.”

 

 

*

 

 

Her new life with Chat Noir begins.

It’s confusing.

 He’s always there when she needs him, the partner to the waltz she long ago learned to dance by herself. She walks across rooftops like a skyscraper, head held high in the sky, and Chat Noir stares up at her like he knows just how to bring her down, piece by piece, until she’s nothing more than a pile of rubble. It’s almost like he understands how she feels. Even though he’s the only other hero she’s met, her fated partner or whatever the history books say, there’s no way he can possible understand what she’s been through.

Just because he doesn’t understand, though, doesn’t mean he doesn’t try. When she gets that faraway look in her eyes, he never says a word, simply placing a soft hand on her shoulder to calm her growing panic. His smile and kind eyes are beautiful, and he’s so bold and brilliant—like a shooting star or a sun she’s seeing for the first time—that it scares her sometimes. 

How can someone born of chaos and shadow be the brightest thing she’s seen in centuries? 

The akumas are easy to deal with, a walk in the park after the trials and tribulations she’s already gone through. Paris is awestruck with their new hero, knowing the legends that follow the red- and black-spotted girl as she made her way across the world—plus, having two heroes to protect them makes things better.

Hawkmoth, however, is relentless.

 “Does he ever stop?” she asks Chat Noir once. 

He shrugs, having dealt with this for over a year now. “Sometimes he takes a break, but not really. I’ve just gotten used to it, I guess.”

Marinette has not. It’s been months, but the constant barrage on her long-crafted defenses are taking their toll. Even though she may be immortal, her temper is not. 

“How did you do this on your own?” 

Chat Noir fixes her with a wry smile. “I never had a choice.”

 She knows what that’s like.

She never had a choice either.

  

 

*

 

She meets Master Fu on a Monday in October, much to her dismay.

“Absolute power comes with a cost,” he warns her, and she knows that Chat Noir has told the Great Guardian everything. “You seek to end your immortality, but in order to do so, you must give it to someone else.”

Marinette has thought about this long and hard. She knows the consequences, but she’s spent more than enough time stuck behind a mask. “I know,” she says. It’s someone else’s turn.

Master Fu comes closer, leveling her with a stern gaze. “Your years may have hardened your frozen heart, but it still knows how to work. I beg of you to reconsider.” 

“There is  _no other way_ ,” she tells him. “I’ve been here for three centuries, and I have looked everywhere and learned everything. There’s no way to break this curse.”

Master Fu is silent for a moment before he sighs. “Then I guess, Ladybug, you haven’t learned anything at all.” 

He leaves as quickly as he came. 

She thinks about Chat Noir, and her heart burns in her chest. Marinette can taste ash on her the tip of her tongue.

She doesn’t know what it means.

(She doesn’t want to.)

 

 

*

 

 

It’s been six months when Chat Noir finally asks the question.

“So how long have you been Ladybug?”

 “Long enough,” is all she says to him because she doesn’t want to broach the subject, doesn’t want to talk about the years she’s spent alone.

Isolation is a pain you suffer by yourself, even when everyone else knows how much it hurts you.

“But you _are_ immortal, right?” he says, quirking an eyebrow high with curiosity. “I’ve been the museum and Master Fu has told me stories. You’ve been around since Egypt, maybe longer. Just how old are you?” 

Marinette only snorts. “Ladybug may have been around for a while, but not the girl under the mask.” She looks up at him. “I’m a lot younger than you think I am.” 

The moon is high in the sky at this time of night as they sit between the spires of Saint Ambroise Church, eyes reflecting the city lights and red cheeks from the wind. It’s an early summer evening where the warm air is heavy and the cool breeze is light, and Marinette doesn’t know whether to fall or fly.

“You never talk about her,” Chat Noir says as he leans back on his haunches, staring out over the city. “The person you used to be.”

“There’s not much to say,” Marinette tells him. “She died a long time ago.”

 _She was the lucky one_ , she thinks to herself.

“You’re still her,” he continues, green eyes dark and deep, imploring to understand. It reminds her of that first night, atop the Eiffel Tower, when he begged her to take up the mantle of Protector of Paris again. “Even if you don’t think so, you’re still her.”

“I’m just Ladybug,” is all she offers. It’s all she’s been for three centuries.

Chat Noir only shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so. You see, Ladybug’s a hero, just some idol who comes and goes, you know? She does her job, and that’s it. You were Ladybug when I first met you, but now… I don’t think you realize how much you’ve changed.” 

And that’s  _confusing_  because she doesn’t think she’s changed that much. Being immortal, for her, isn’t just about the unlimited lifespan—it’s being stuck in time, constant and every way, like a marble statue no one can ever chip away. Change is not a word in her vocabulary.

She thinks about what he could possibly mean. She thinks about the rush of air brushing past as she flies through the city, the laughter that spills from her mouth as easily as breath, how Chat Noir can always pull a smile with a pun or stupid banter. She thinks about how she’s memorized his puns as she has the constellations, how she knows his laughter like her favorite symphony, how she’d give up everything if it meant he wouldn’t have to be sentenced to the same fate as her.

“You really think so?” she asks him, breathless.

He stares at her, his laughter visible in the lines around his mouth, lips pulled in a smile that’s too loose and too perfect at the same time. “Yeah, I really do.” Turning back to stare out at the city, he intertwines his hand with hers, fingers interlocking together. “I think you’re more alive than you think you are, bug.” 

She carries those words with her for a long, long time.

 

 

*

 

It’s two years later, and Chat Noir has become her partner in more ways than one.

Kiss-swollen lips part as heavy gasps spill from them, white puffs of breath lingering in the space between them like smoke to a fire. Marinette throws her head back against the brick wall of the chimney as Chat Noir presses closer, kissing the side of her neck and winding one arm around her waist to tug her against him.

“ _Chat_ ,” she moans lowly, gravely in the back of her throat. 

“Adrien,” he whispers instead, kissing the slack-jaw expression off her face when she doesn’t respond. “Call me Adrien.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to know each other’s identities,” Marinette tells him, still dumbstruck from his reveal. “Secrets are supposed to stay secret.”

“Sometimes, secrets are better when shared,” he says.

It hurts her sometimes—the pact of their partnership being built upon secrets and lies. She thinks about Chat Noir and how his identity is the only thing he hides from her. She thinks about every secret she keeps close to her chest, the ones that she only thinks about in the late twilight when she’s alone, where they almost crush her with her weight.

She thinks about her plan to take his mortality. She thinks about how it’s all for her survival, because she can’t go on living as Ladybug, about how Marinette is already  _dead_.

She thinks about all of this, and she wants to cry.

Through a mouth full of broken glass, she tries to smile and gives him the one secret she’s allowed to. “I’ll call you Adrien if you call me Marinette.”

He says her name slowly. “Marinette?” The word sounds strange coming from his tongue, the first time in nearly three centuries that she’s heard her name from someone else.

“Yeah.”

Adrien stares at her for a moment, all wide eyes and soft lips, before he smiles. “I think I love you, Marinette.”

Instead of replying, she pulls on his collar and tugs him close, pressing her lips to his, and stealing away his right to breathe.

She loves him, she knows that.

But, alas, it’s another secret she can’t bear to tell.

 

 

*

 

 

Hawkmoth’s defeat comes five years after she comes home to Paris.

The battle itself is long and treacherous, and both Chat Noir and her bear more scars than they should. The reveal of Gabriel Agreste behind the mask turns her blood to poison, and she dreads to think of how Adrien feels. Unlike him though, she doesn’t have a working heart to pump fresh blood through her body to cleanse herself, and instead she must simmer in the fury and frustration of her partner’s pain.

“A deal’s a deal,” he tells her later that night atop Saint Ambroise Church. It’s become their special spot in the half decade she’s spent in this city—her  _home_ —and she can’t imagine being any other place with any other person. “I owe you one Miraculous.”

He slips the ring into her shaky hand, cool metal burning her through the material of her suit. “I… I don’t know what to say.”

“Just… be happy, Marinette,” he says to her with a wry smile.

She clenches her hand into a fist, the ring at the center, and tries to stop the burn of tears in the corners of her eyes. She hasn’t cried in almost a century, and she doesn’t want to start any time soon. However, after this last battle, when she’s so close to everything she’s wanted for over three hundred years, she figures it’s as good of a time as any.

The first tear slips, unbidden, down her wind-blistered cheek, thick and slow, like candlewax. “I don’t think I can be.”

Because she knows what happens next. She’s known since the moment she first met Chat Noir, a long time before she fell in love with Adrien Agreste.

She’ll trade her immortality for his mortality.

He lives, and she’ll die.

After fighting by his side for the past five years, she knows he’d be strong enough to go on. Slowly but surely, Adrien would scour the globe as she did, searching for answers to a life he didn’t ask for but received anyway trying to help the person he loves. Perhaps he might have more luck (the idea makes her laugh, that the Bringer of Bad Luck would have the good luck she never could find). His soft heart, his kind temperament, his charismatic smiles—everything about him was strong and good, and immortality might be the best gift she can offer him.

But looking at him now, having lost the only family he has left in effort to fulfill his duty as Protector of Paris, Marinette is reminded too much of herself. Before she turned jaded and cold, she’d been just a girl trying so hard to protect the people and city she loved—and it cost her  _everything_ … her family, friends, life, name… If she gave Adrien her immortality right now, he might turn out just like her. 

And that would be the cruelest thing in the world.

So, with a heavy heart, Marinette hands Adrien back his ring. “Keep it.”

His wide eyes turn on her. “What?” he gasps. “B-But you… You  _need_ this!”

 

.

.

.

 

 _You might be hurt._  

_You don’t need it; you just want it. But Paris—this city—needs it. You’re just selfish._

_You haven’t learned anything at all then, Ladybug_.

 

.

.

.

 

“No, I don’t,” she tells him.

.

.

.

 

 _I think you’re more alive than you think you are, bug_.

_I think I’m in love with you, Marinette._

_Just… be happy_.

.

.

.

There will be other ways, she knows this. It’s been three hundred years, and there’s thousands upon thousands of histories to read through and so much more to live through. If giving up now means losing the most important to her, Marinette doesn’t think she has the strength to live through that.

“I think I love you, Adrien,” she tells him under the starlit sky, where the wind sings a lullaby between the twin spires, and she can’t think of anything else that would make her happier. “I want to be with you.”

“I…” Adrien stumbles over his words. “Are you sure? I… I’ll grow old and die.”

Marinette cocks her head and steadies him with a soft smile, laughter spilling between them. “And hopefully, we’ll find some way for me to do the same.”

 They kiss.

 For the first time in three hundred years, Marinette feels alive.

 

 

*

 

 

They say you die twice: one time, when you stop breathing, and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.

Marinette’s been dead for a while, though not in the figurative way that most assume. In the three hundred years she’s been around, there have been times she’s wished she could give up, but ever since she met her partner, things have changed. She still looks for a way to end her immortality, and Adrien helps her. 

But in the meantime… there’s more than one way of living.


End file.
